Outsourcing nightmare haunts UK

By siliconindia staff writer   |   Tuesday, 04 November 2003, 20:30 IST
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LONDON: An ominous campaign against outsourcing out East is set to intensify as EuropeÂ’s biggest finance union warns that Britain will begin to feel the real physical and psychological ill-effects of the great Indian jobs takeaway in five months time. Lloyds TSB, a major UK bank, announced on Thursday that it was physically pulling out of EnglandÂ’s call-centre capital, Newcastle in north-east England and exporting the jobs lock, stock and barrel to Hyderabad . Till now, says banking union Unifi, which is spread across more than 400 employers, British banks and financial companies were merely conducting pilot programmes in India . But now the prologue is over and the real drama begins with Lloyds undertaking the first physical slamming of doors in Britain as a result of jobs going to India , Unifi told TNN. Unifi national officer Bernadette Fisher warned it would "be a litmus test of the British response", probably sparking strikes and a sustained campaign against "putting profits before conscience and exploiting workers in the Third World ". Unifi was one of the four heavy-weight unions that forced Britain to begin its largest parliamentary inquiry into the jobs flight to India. (Source: Economic Times)